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Is this the best defence of Bitcoin this guy can come up with? Really?
Yes, it will. Probably not too long after the time the last one gets mined.
So in ~2140? Miners will still get TX fees after that.

We'll see, or not.

Someone else will see, not us. Or not. Are the fools greater in the future just by dint of inability to change the past?
If it actually takes that long, we have far bigger problems, because that means technological advance has halted or regressed. In that case, it will die suddenly whenever electricity goes up and price/coin goes down long enough that all non-criminal mining operations shut down and investors panic.
How could that limit be reached faster with better technology?
The difficulty of mining a Bitcoin block automatically adjusts based on network hashrate as measured by how fast recent blocks have been mined. It is already the case that improvements in technology have massively increased hashrates (per kW) and difficulty (you'd be rich if you went back in time 10 years with modern hardware).

Likewise, electricity prices and miners shutting off their hardware will lead to a reduction in difficulty.

TLDR version: Bitcoin is really cool, and lots of people think it's really cool, so it won't fail.
"Bitcoin is not going to fail," says guy heavily invested in Bitcoin and other crypto.

Hard to get someone to change their mind when their paycheck depends on them not changing it.

is there anything comparable to bitcoin in history (and no, not tulips)?

a technology that had some merit, but also a lot of doubters/haters?

seems BTC, and crypto is some novel historical event. i can't really compare it to anything.

not sure why i was downvoted. i just asked a simple question. seems the hate for crypto is really intense in some.
This is not a constructive contribution and is addressed in the HN Guidelines:

> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading

But to add my own, more substantive comment:

I do have an intense hate of crypto. Not sure why you want to ignore tulips — speculative financial instruments seem like a very valuable comparison to crypto… For my part, I object to (a) the sheer narcissism of the crypto community, which claims crypto is better but fails to address the basic use cases needed to gain any practical traction in the real world (fast transactions, insured deposits), and (b) the way that crypto is hyped and ends up with normal people being taken advantage of (celebrity endorsements then a crash, NFTs).

Crypto doesn’t seem to solve any problem, but it sure has contributed to fucking over a lot of regular people

> some merit, but also a lot of doubters/haters?

The internet. Trains. ...

And Beanie Babies are going to keep increasing in value.
> Imagine saying you support crypto but not Bitcoin. That’s crazy. Yet that is what we see everywhere.

No; that's what we see practically nowhere.

We see tons of people supporting crypto in general. And tons of people opposing all crypto. And some people supporting bitcoin but not any other crypto, i.e. bitcoin maximalists. But there's no such thing as an altcoin maximalist that support crypto in generals except for bitcoin.

Most of the altcoins I'd recognize were created because Bitcoin was deficient in some respect, whether it be scalability, privacy, etc. Bitcoin itself forked over such concerns.
Bitcoin has already failed in every way that really matters to most people.

About all that's left at this point is criminal activity, anarchist cult and naive speculation.

I use BTC to do my sports betting and to buy things from o.co . I have never used it for anything illegal nor know anyone who has. I use USD for that. The USD fails every day and it's still the global currency despite being popular amongst criminal activity.